Beautiful notes, summaries, mind maps. . .
Not among the best study techniques. As for past issues and practices, they are always cited as the best study techniques. But does that mean it's better not to write it down?
What happens when you take notes in a class? You turn a teacher's words into your words, drawings or diagrams. This fact of leaving the content chewed up for the brain contributes to the first stage of memorization: encoding.
Which is when you transform these visual and auditory stimuli into the first memory representations, into these footprints. In practice, taking notes helps to better understand what is being passed and retain this information for a longer period. And the more you use your words, think of analogies, organize that information, categorize it.
The more you do this, the more you leave this information ready for your brain to memorize. But yeah, what are the three mistakes when taking notes in class? The first is quantity.
It's that idea of copying everything, of transcribing the class, as if you were a scribe and were writing a book on that subject. It happens that you are afraid of forgetting and in order not to forget, you write everything down. And when you write everything down, you don't understand anything.
And then, the magical conclusion is that, after class, you will study and understand that. Good idea, isn't it? Just not!
So, what makes sense is to focus on the main thing in the note, what is most important, what calls your attention the most, the relationships between these subjects you are studying or the relationship between the new subject and what you have already seen in the past. And so an important point is to have the notes as a tool to understand. So, you are in a class, you can use the fact that you have a pen and paper to organize all this information that is being passed on in a mind map, for example, in a tree diagram.
So, you look and this information is organized. And this will make you understand better, see the general idea and learn this subject better. The general idea is something we don't think about much.
Sometimes we think that learning the detail is more important. So, you're there in the detail of the detail of biology, when you don't even understand the general idea. So always the general idea first.
And writing it down can make you get to it faster. The second error is the Format. So, it's writing text, it's writing.
It's writing, like this, uninterruptedly. And it doesn't have a title, it doesn't have a subtitle, it doesn't have bold, it doesn't have a drawing, it doesn't have a number, it doesn't have bullets. You know, it's a kind of note that's bad to make, because it's going to be more like the transcript and it's bad to look at later.
Because you go there and look and there's nothing that catches your attention, there's nothing visually important. So, formatting, it helps, both when writing notes, thinking about ideas, relating, seeing what's inside what, what's a child of what, in the tree diagram, and also if you want see this note during the exercises or after studying this subject. So, always think about your 'Future Me'.
What does your 'Future Self' mean? want to see when he sees these notes? A long text, an essay that will be difficult, you'll see and.
. . Oh, just looking at it, it'll be.
. . Wow, you won't want it!
Or everything cute, schematic, with bullets, sub-bullets, sub, sub, sub-bullets, drawings, analogies, rainbows, unicorns. . .
? I am not kidding! But anyway, the format is important and there are several formats you can do.
But more important than the specific format is having formatting, having a hierarchy between ideas. This is error two, not having formatting. And you won't make that mistake anymore.
The third mistake is When. So when should you take notes and when should you not take notes. So, there is an interesting concept, which is Cognitive Load.
So let's think that your working memory, which is how much information you can handle at the same time, is carrying various weights. So, you're attending class and you 're exercising that working memory. When you reach a limit, when there is a lot of information you are dealing with, it is very difficult to keep up, you feel that you are losing information.
And in practice it is very difficult to understand. So it's like you are in a class, everything very fast, he doesn't understand. So, what is the solution that people sometimes find?
It's writing down. And that might not be a good idea. So, in this case, you are in a class that is difficult, it is difficult to follow.
So, imagine, an exact sciences class, a new, super difficult subject. And then, you are not understanding, then you will write it down, which will increase the cognitive load. So, there is a level of cognitive load in the class, when you take notes, you increase this level.
Both if the class is easy and if it is very difficult. So, it will always increase a little bit when taking notes, because you are organizing the information, you are categorizing, you are, you know, thinking about what you are going to write down in your own words. So, many times, when a subject is very difficult, it's nice to just attend the class.
Forget the note, scare the class! Yes, it is useful for retention; but in this case it is already a difficult subject, it is better to watch it at once just to understand. And then, if that's the case, you, you know, look at that content again and write it down; or else it goes straight to the questions, which can be even better.
So knowing when to write it down can be very important. There is another extreme as well, which is when the class is too easy. And then, you are obliged.
. . Let's say you are obliged to attend this class, so, in a school, in college or, you know, a class that you have to attend.
And you're bored, you want to look at your phone, you want to look away, you don't want to attend class. What's one way you can make it more challenging? You can write it down.
And, when taking notes, the difficulty of the class rises a little, especially when you take notes of general ideas, as if it were a mental map of the entire class. When you do that, the difficulty goes up and the subject becomes even more interesting. If, for example, if you attend classes at home, it's an easier subject, you already have mastery of it, you don't necessarily need to write it down.
So, sometimes, if it's simple, you see the class, you go straight to the questions. So, it's pretty cool to also know when to write it down. So, that is, in short.
When the class is very difficult, increasing the cognitive load even more by taking notes is not cool. So this is not cool. When the class is very easy and you are forced to attend, you have to attend this class, taking notes will increase the cognitive load a little, it will make it more interesting and so you use the class in a better way, you are already learning this content in class.
In the case of an online course of an easier class, of a subject that you have already seen, you can skip the annotation, go straight to the questions and base it on that. So, your memorization, it will happen only with the questions. In fact, it is the most common thing to happen in questions.
So, when taking notes, we prepare the process, we start; but the most important learning is that in the questions. And, so, in general, the greatest learning and, thus, where you feel more engaged, more enjoying studying, learning, is when your cognitive load is somewhere in between, like this average. It's not even so loud that you can't keep up; not too low, which is boring.
So, like, in between. So, whenever possible, try to leave it in the middle ground. So, today, more than giving you the formula for how to take notes, I wanted to teach you the principles through these annotation mistakes, which are so common and, well, I've already made them all and that's why I also learn and pass on here for you.
And the hands-on part of really taking notes. So how are you going to attend a class? What are the types of annotations - so, linear annotation, non-linear annotation, when are you going to use each one?
And thus answers to various questions. So are you going to do a flash card during class or after class? How to do it?
They are there in the Question Sniper in a brand new module, which is called 'How to take notes in classes '. And if you still don't know the Question Sniper, it's a course that shows you how to study to pass the ENEM or Vestibular. And that involves study strategy.
So how are you going to study each subject. With that, for example, how you are going to take notes in class, how to revise. It also shows you how to plan, so how to make your timeline of the year, how to think about your tasks in each subject or prioritize the most important.
And you even get live mentorships on Zoom twice a week, clear any doubts. And the idea of Sniper is for you to have a lot of clarity, a lot of peace of mind that you are studying in the best way possible, so you can, you know, sleep peacefully, that you are doing your best to get your place in college and the course you always dreamed of . So, this is the idea of the Quest Sniper, I invite you to take a look.
And about the grades, that's it. So, it was never copying everything, don't get that fear, that cycle of fear of losing that makes you not understand, that makes you copy more. And mistake two was having the wrong format.
So now you know, your notes are going to be all formatted, with bullets, sub-bullets, sometimes even different colored pens, drawings, tree diagrams and whatnot. And the third mistake was taking notes at the wrong times. So, we need to know when.
What is the best time to take notes or not to take notes. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Tell me what you think in the comments, enjoy and thank you so much for watching!
I'm really happy lately because the channel is growing so much and that's thanks to you watching. So thank you very much indeed! And keep going after your dreams, the world needs the skill that only you have!
And we'll see you in the next video, bye!